Kamala Harris is San Francisco's first Black district attorney

Jet, Jan 5, 2004

KAMALA HARRIS IS SAN FRANCISCO'S FIRST BLACK DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Kamala Harris (l) gives her victory speech as district attorney at her campaign headquarters in San Francisco, as her mother, Dr. Shyamala Harris (c), looks on. She became the first female district attorney in the city's history and the first Black to hold the office statewide.

The outgoing mayor, Willie Brown, championed her. Harris, a Brown protege, dramatically ousted two-term prosecutor Terence Hallinan, 67, who had campaigned as "the nation's most progressive D.A." but gained notoriety for indicting the city's police chief, emphasizing prevention over punishment, championing the rights of medical marijuana users and promoting leniency for drug users and prostitutes. Hallinan took on the police department after three off-duty officers were involved in a late-night street brawl over a bag of steak fajitas. He later dropped charges against the police chief and assistant chief, and a judge earlier this year dismissed charges against five other officers accused of conspiring to cover up the brawl. Harris repeatedly slammed Hallinan as soft on crime, and cited managerial problems in the district attorney's office that have contributed to a huge backlog of cases pending trial. Harris, who graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, has been a prosecutor for 13 years working with police in both Alameda County and San Francisco.